Waterloo Region Connected
General Politics Discussion - Printable Version

+- Waterloo Region Connected (https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com)
+-- Forum: Waterloo Region Works (https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=14)
+--- Forum: Politics (https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=18)
+--- Thread: General Politics Discussion (/showthread.php?tid=66)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31


RE: General Politics Discussion - timio - 06-03-2022

I'm glad both Del Duca and Horwath are stepping down. I hope the Liberals and NDP take some time for soul searching and come up with a leader who can inspire the electorate to think better about the future.

But, this being Ontario, they'll likely select someone uninspiring and we'll end up with many more years of dumpster fire government.


RE: General Politics Discussion - ijmorlan - 06-03-2022

(06-03-2022, 05:40 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: I'm so frustrated that DoFo won again. The thing which kills me on this is the 413. We fought so hard to kill it under the liberals, and now it is going to go ahead anyway.

Do you think it will open before or after the new Highway 7 to Guelph? Tongue

But seriously, I read an article which pointed out that Ford managed to make a lot of the election about the highway, rather than about his record. Very clever, and a poor performance from the opposition and media for allowing the switcheroo.

On the other hand, highways sometimes move slowly. Who knows, maybe it will get cancelled again.


RE: General Politics Discussion - jamincan - 06-03-2022

(06-03-2022, 08:38 AM)robdrimmie Wrote:
(06-03-2022, 07:20 AM)jamincan Wrote: I get the need to vent after a frustrating election, but this is such complete BS. We have a broken electoral system in this country, and the NDP led such an uninspiring campaign - mostly telling people why not to vote for Del Duca, or why a vote for Person X is a vote for the PCs - that I don't think it's remotely fair to criticize voters for not showing up when there is absolutely no one to vote for.

I can't agree with this. I find it extremely selfish to look at the past four years of decisions the Conservatives have made, and look at the alternative platforms and believe that it doesn't matter. These results matter a lot to healthcare workers, educators, disabled folks and many, many more. 

There are a lot of reasons people couldn't vote this election and there are a lot of reasons people chose not to vote. Choosing not to vote this election wasn't making a point about bad choices it was making a choice in favour of the status quo.

I personally don't think not voting is making any point at all. But focusing ire on apathetic voters as if it's some sort of moral failing is a pointless endeavor. Ultimately, I believe that we vote *for* someone. If you can't make the case to 65% of voters that your party isn't worth voting for, that's your fault, not the voters' fault. Obviously it's frustrating when there is so much at stake and on the line, but let's point our ire at our political parties that fumbled the ball, since that is something that we might actually have some hope of fixing.

My personal example: as a left-leaning undecided voter going into this election that despises the Liberal Party, I was deeply disappoint to hear the NDP parroting the long-standing Liberal talking point of "a vote for X is a vote for Conservatives". I ended up voting Green knowing that my riding was probably in the bag for the NDP and liking Mike Schreiner, but there is nothing that pisses me off more than someone acting like their party is somehow entitled to my vote and as someone who actually believes in voting, I have never come so close to not bothering.


RE: General Politics Discussion - robdrimmie - 06-03-2022

(06-03-2022, 12:14 PM)jamincan Wrote: Ultimately, I believe that we vote *for* someone.

We have a fundamental difference in why we vote; I don't vote for people. There's no one person setting policy. Leaders have influence of course, but they are representatives of coalitions. None of them do it alone.

We're not going to agree here, and I've said my peace. I hope your weekend is nice.


RE: General Politics Discussion - danbrotherston - 06-03-2022

(06-03-2022, 09:55 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(06-03-2022, 05:40 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: I'm so frustrated that DoFo won again. The thing which kills me on this is the 413. We fought so hard to kill it under the liberals, and now it is going to go ahead anyway.

Do you think it will open before or after the new Highway 7 to Guelph?  Tongue

But seriously, I read an article which pointed out that Ford managed to make a lot of the election about the highway, rather than about his record. Very clever, and a poor performance from the opposition and media for allowing the switcheroo.

On the other hand, highways sometimes move slowly. Who knows, maybe it will get cancelled again.

You're optimistic. The highway is there to promote development in the greenbelt. It is the policy that his donors want.

My bet is, it'll get built before the next election, or at least be so far along as to be impossible to cancel. And I don't see us having AW2D GO or highway 7 by then.

Ford is an unmitigated disaster. IMO 413 is the most unrecoverable harm he's going to cause. Even our healthcare system can be rebuilt, the Holland Marsh cannot be unpaved.


RE: General Politics Discussion - tomh009 - 06-03-2022

(06-03-2022, 05:40 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: While I agree with you completely the thing which terrifies me the most is that I see us moving towards the US.

It's both a thing we are doing, and also, the nefarious influences (and I don't use that word dramatically) which are pushing the US away from democracy and towards fascism are investing here as well.

I'm so frustrated that DoFo won again. The thing which kills me on this is the 413. We fought so hard to kill it under the liberals, and now it is going to go ahead anyway.

We may or may not be moving toward the US scenario. But this election is not evidence of that. We had a super clean (boring?) election campaign, we had zero issues with voting access, we counted the votes overnight, there were no disputes or recounts. And that's on top of the fact that Ford has moved substantially toward the centre from his populist origins.

I think most people here know that I'm no fan of Ford, but there is no doubt that his positions have evolved, even if he still prioritizes the suburbs (905 etc) over the city centres.


RE: General Politics Discussion - danbrotherston - 06-03-2022

(06-03-2022, 03:12 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(06-03-2022, 05:40 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: While I agree with you completely the thing which terrifies me the most is that I see us moving towards the US.

It's both a thing we are doing, and also, the nefarious influences (and I don't use that word dramatically) which are pushing the US away from democracy and towards fascism are investing here as well.

I'm so frustrated that DoFo won again. The thing which kills me on this is the 413. We fought so hard to kill it under the liberals, and now it is going to go ahead anyway.

We may or may not be moving toward the US scenario. But this election is not evidence of that. We had a super clean (boring?) election campaign, we had zero issues with voting access, we counted the votes overnight, there were no disputes or recounts. And that's on top of the fact that Ford has moved substantially toward the centre from his populist origins.

I think most people here know that I'm no fan of Ford, but there is no doubt that his positions have evolved, even if he still prioritizes the suburbs (905 etc) over the city centres.

I agree with this election on most points.

I do think that the USification was still visible here. DoFo saw no need to present a platform. Him and his candidates avoided debates, they avoided the media, they excluded non-supporters from his rallies.

The media ignored all this.

While I don't think it's a step forward (we saw all this in 2018) it is still harmful to see this in our democracy.


RE: General Politics Discussion - KevinL - 06-03-2022

That our only remaining reliable mainstream journalistic media are all directly aligned with just one of the ruling parties(' supporters) is of deep concern. And not just in this country.


RE: General Politics Discussion - tomh009 - 06-03-2022

(06-03-2022, 07:59 PM)KevinL Wrote: That our only remaining reliable mainstream journalistic media are all directly aligned with just one of the ruling parties(' supporters) is of deep concern. And not just in this country.

I don't see that with the CBC, but maybe my glasses are rose-coloured.

For G&M, they have columnists who are clearly supportive of Liberals, and other supportive of Conservatives/PCs. Maybe no one clearly in the NDP camp, though.

NP is very much in the Conservative camp.

I don't read the Star (too many subscriptions already) so can't judge whether they include multiple points of view.


RE: General Politics Discussion - danbrotherston - 06-04-2022

(06-03-2022, 10:18 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(06-03-2022, 07:59 PM)KevinL Wrote: That our only remaining reliable mainstream journalistic media are all directly aligned with just one of the ruling parties(' supporters) is of deep concern. And not just in this country.

I don't see that with the CBC, but maybe my glasses are rose-coloured.

For G&M, they have columnists who are clearly supportive of Liberals, and other supportive of Conservatives/PCs. Maybe no one clearly in the NDP camp, though.

NP is very much in the Conservative camp.

I don't read the Star (too many subscriptions already) so can't judge whether they include multiple points of view.

I think a lot of our news media leans conservative these days, but that wasn't actually my main objection.

The media is aggressively establishment. Less so than the US, but they seem unwilling or unable to properly cover and frame some of the extraordinary things going on right now. Between the housing crisis, rising extremism, and the 1000 lb gorilla of climate change, they consistently fail to give in depth clear analysis of the effects, causes, and possible solutions. Instead they usually just parrot talking points and prefer to push the narrative of the day, rather than keeping important but less popular stories going.

In some ways it isn't a new problem, but our world is accelerating, with increasing levels of analytics data this makes the problems orders of magnitude more acute.


RE: General Politics Discussion - neonjoe - 06-04-2022

I think DOFO burned all his bridges early on so people would forget and it worked. He did show something that many politicians don’t do, he showed the ability to pivot to the scenario and he did apologize for mistakes. This makes him far different from the Trumps and Kenny’s out there who just double down. The PC conservatives also seemed to have moved back to his historic Ontario PCs which would be a small c conservative. They have been willing to throw money around at Transit and aren’t solely focused on austerity. It would be better if they did focus spending more on soft needs, health, education etc, but infrastructure is visible and people see it every day.
The Liberals and NDP need to refocus and say what they will improve, rather than attacking each other.


RE: General Politics Discussion - tomh009 - 06-04-2022

(06-04-2022, 01:23 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: The media is aggressively establishment. Less so than the US, but they seem unwilling or unable to properly cover and frame some of the extraordinary things going on right now. Between the housing crisis, rising extremism, and the 1000 lb gorilla of climate change, they consistently fail to give in depth clear analysis of the effects, causes, and possible solutions. Instead they usually just parrot talking points and prefer to push the narrative of the day, rather than keeping important but less popular stories going.

In some ways it isn't a new problem, but our world is accelerating, with increasing levels of analytics data this makes the problems orders of magnitude more acute.

Most mainstream media does short newsbites, whether from CP/AP/Reuters or their own. Probably because that's what most people want to read, short attention spans and all.

G&M does do some excellent deep investigative journalism from time to time -- one example was a very solid investigation into the black and (in particular) indigenous incarceration rates and their causes in Canada, in late 2020. Those kinds of investigations take months of work, though, so even the best media outlets do that relatively infrequently.

That particular investigation is still worth reading:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-investigation-racial-bias-in-canadian-prison-risk-assessments/

Maybe available somewhere without a paywall? But this kind of work is what makes my G&M subscription worthwhile.


RE: General Politics Discussion - cherrypark - 06-04-2022

(06-03-2022, 03:12 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(06-03-2022, 09:55 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: Do you think it will open before or after the new Highway 7 to Guelph?  Tongue

But seriously, I read an article which pointed out that Ford managed to make a lot of the election about the highway, rather than about his record. Very clever, and a poor performance from the opposition and media for allowing the switcheroo.

On the other hand, highways sometimes move slowly. Who knows, maybe it will get cancelled again.

You're optimistic. The highway is there to promote development in the greenbelt. It is the policy that his donors want.

My bet is, it'll get built before the next election, or at least be so far along as to be impossible to cancel. And I don't see us having AW2D GO or highway 7 by then.

Ford is an unmitigated disaster. IMO 413 is the most unrecoverable harm he's going to cause. Even our healthcare system can be rebuilt, the Holland Marsh cannot be unpaved.

Here's hoping the federal level environmental assessment process at least grinds the pace to a halt if not outright stopping it. Not clear how much they are going to be able to oppose, though, beyond maybe forcing a couple more alignment changes that the Ford crew intentionally ignored recommendations to avoid harm to suit his developer donors.


RE: General Politics Discussion - sevenman - 06-04-2022

(06-03-2022, 03:12 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(06-03-2022, 09:55 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: Do you think it will open before or after the new Highway 7 to Guelph?  Tongue

But seriously, I read an article which pointed out that Ford managed to make a lot of the election about the highway, rather than about his record. Very clever, and a poor performance from the opposition and media for allowing the switcheroo.

On the other hand, highways sometimes move slowly. Who knows, maybe it will get cancelled again.

You're optimistic. The highway is there to promote development in the greenbelt. It is the policy that his donors want.

My bet is, it'll get built before the next election, or at least be so far along as to be impossible to cancel. And I don't see us having AW2D GO or highway 7 by then.

Ford is an unmitigated disaster. IMO 413 is the most unrecoverable harm he's going to cause. Even our healthcare system can be rebuilt, the Holland Marsh cannot be unpaved.

Hwy 413 doesn't go anywhere near the Holland Marsh


RE: General Politics Discussion - cherrypark - 06-04-2022

(06-04-2022, 02:19 PM)sevenman Wrote:
(06-03-2022, 03:12 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: You're optimistic. The highway is there to promote development in the greenbelt. It is the policy that his donors want.

My bet is, it'll get built before the next election, or at least be so far along as to be impossible to cancel. And I don't see us having AW2D GO or highway 7 by then.

Ford is an unmitigated disaster. IMO 413 is the most unrecoverable harm he's going to cause. Even our healthcare system can be rebuilt, the Holland Marsh cannot be unpaved.

Hwy 413 doesn't go anywhere near the Holland Marsh

I think mixing up the 413 and the Bradford Bypass. Both planned to proceed by Ford.